The best and the worst features of the communal regime are
illustrated in the resistance of the Lombard cities to Frederic Barbarossa, the
first Emperor who formulated and applied to Italy a scheme of absolutist government.
Between 1154 and 1176 the Lombards turned the course of history. They prepared
the way for Innocent III to plant his foot upon the necks of kings, and for
Innocent IV to destroy the House of Hohenstauffen. That this would be the
result of their stand for liberty, neither they nor the other parties to the
struggle could foretell. But on both sides it was felt that the greatest issues
were at stake. The question was whether Italy should, once for all, accept a
German yoke; whether the Papacy should become a German patriarchate; whether
free institutions, both in Church and State, should give place to a bureaucracy.
The question did not take this shape from the beginning.
When Frederic first intervened in Lombardy he came to protect the smaller
cities against the imperialist ambitions of Milan, to restore the public peace,
to investigate innumerable complaints of force and fraud. Many of the cities
hailed him as a deliverer; against him were only the clients of Milan, or those
who, on a humbler scale, aspired to emulate her policy. Even so it was no easy
matter to chastise the most insignificant of the contumacious communes; and
Milan, who refused point-blank to give satisfaction for her lawless acts of
conquests, or even to renounce what she had won, could not safely be attacked.
